Concert Series II, 2011-2012 Season
Paul Dukas
La Péri Fanfare
This very short piece, written to precede Dukas' ballet, La Péri, is, like many fanfares, for brass alone. It begins with the predictable "wall of sound" tattoo for everyone, but after that the texture opens up, with bits of melody for each kind of instrument (trumpet, French horn, trombone, and tuba), and we get to hear the particular color of each instrument. The harmonies are quite astringent, but not wildly dissonant, as befits his position between the conservative and progressive factions of French music during his lifetime.
Antonin Dvorak
Serenade for Winds, Cello and Bass in D Minor, Op. 44
1878, the year this work was written, was the year that Dvorak hit the jackpot. His 1877 application for an Austrian state stipend was strongly supported by Brahms, who said, "He is a very talented man. Moreover, he is poor!" Brahms' approbation set off a chain of approval that brought Dvorak significant recognition (in terms of both concerts and publications) in 1878, and his fame only increased from then on. The pieces that Dvorak had submitted for this application included the Moravian Duets for soprano, tenor, and piano, set to Czech texts and with folk-like aspects. A significant element in his fame was his use of Slavonic dance rhythms and melody types, which hit a nerve both with Czech audiences, who were happy to find their heritage reflected in concert music, and with Germanic audiences, who found these slightly exotic elements quite "piquant" (Brahms's word). Although this Serenade was written at this quite "Slavonic" moment in Dvorak's life, its Czechness is more in a general tone of "old-world well-disposed and cordial humour," as Czech musicologist Otakar Sourek has noted, than in the conspicuous use of Bohemian music.
The first movement is a march, made more solemn by its minor mode. The main material of the movement-introduced immediately-is never really absent; even in the contrasting quieter sections we hear the skippy dotted rhythm in the background pretty regularly. The second movement is a minuet and trio-the minuet being a very upright and noble French court dance quite far removed from Bohemian country dancing. The basic minuet has three, more-or-less even beats in each bar (ONE TWO THREE), unlike the waltz's "ONE two three." But Dvorak has confused this a bit by underarticulating the beats at the beginning and then shaping the melody so that the little running figure, which would be a pickup in a Mozart minuet is on the strong beat. Otakar Sourek describes this as a sousedká (a Czech dance), but since Dvorak entitled the movement Minuet, it seems pretty clear that he intended the audience to hear it as somewhere between Paris/Vienna and the Woods of Bohemia. The trio (middle section) is faster, and occasionally uses the disruptive rhythm of the Czech furiant (which groups six beats into three groups of two against the prevailing minuet-like two-bar rhythm of two groups of three). The slow movement explores a variety of colors and gives the two low strings a more prominent role than they've had yet. The last movement starts off as a lively dance, perhaps related to the polka. This dance material keeps returning, rondo-like, interrupted by various episodes including the march from the very beginning. As the rondo theme returns, however, it's often changed in some way, which keeps the otherwise slight material delightfully fresh and interesting.
Gustav Mahler
Adagietto
This work is the slow fourth movement of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, quite often excerpted as an independent work. For strings and harp alone, it typifies the hothouse atmosphere of the Vienna of Sigmund Freud. The opening tune in the first violins seems to presage a calm, even bucolic mood, but underneath, other voices surge forward, passionately promoting their version of the melodic material. In the course of the movement, that material gets increasingly agonized and extreme before returning to the opening tune, this time tinged with echoes of the central struggles.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47
Written and first performed in 1937, this was a landmark work for Shostakovich. A year earlier, he had fallen from grace with Stalin, his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk having been condemned by the regime in the newspaper Pravda as "muddle instead of music." The Soviet Composers' Union, which had the power to grant or deny composers commissions and posts in educational institutions-in a word, to make or break composers' careers-marched other composers to the lectern in their meetings to denounce Shostakovich for "formalism": that is, for music insufficiently dedicated to mass appeal and a heroic manner. In response, Shostakovich entitled this symphony "A Soviet Artist's Response to Just Criticism," and it was received absolutely rapturously at its premiere. The audience wept during the third movement, applauded for half an hour at the end, and other composers wrote encomiums like the following: "A work of such philosophical depth and emotional force could only be created here in the Soviet Union."
The work is indeed heroic in proportions (it's 45 minutes long) and manner; it moves from the austerity of the opening movement to the major-mode triumphalism of the last, thus following a similar pattern to that of Beethoven's Fifth. In his official writings about it, Shostakovich likened it to the development of a personality (himself, thinly disguised) moving from uncertainty to a place in the sun. He wrote that it embodied "all that he had thought and felt" since the devastating criticism in Pravda, a sentence that was clearly meant to be read on the surface as an acknowledgment of the rightness of the Stalinist criticism. But even during Soviet times, music critics and others read a different and more resistant "program" into the work-one in which, as Richard Taruskin writes, they wept, then "stood up and cheered, grateful for the pain." The music, in other words, allowed them access to a range of feelings and attitudes that they could not express in daily life.
How can we hear this so socially-embedded work today? Is the last movement truly triumphal or so over the top that it's a parody of triumphalism? Is any listening necessarily bound to politics? The easy answer is that great art transcends its circumstances to speak to all people in all ages, and it is certainly possible to listen to this work as an abstract story of struggle and triumph. One can also hear a masterly collage of musical references: listen for the stern Bach-like counterpoint in the first movement, a grotesque waltz in the second, the resonant chords of Orthodox sacred music in the third and the last movement of Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth symphonies in the last-so much for "only in the Soviet Union"! Or one can relate the whole thing to Beethoven, noting how the simplest materials pervade and unify the work, the main examples being the two three-note rhythms short-short-long ("To-ny-BLAIR") and long-short-short ("LI-bra-ry").
The fascination of this symphony is that all these messages and meanings are equally true. The last movement is a triumph (and a relief) after the pain of the third movement; we do recognize psychological archetypes in the music at the same time as those attach to the demands of a particular appalling political agenda. The grotesque waltz (a Shostakovich specialty) is funny and terrifying at the same time. So a respectful way to listen to this work might be in a spirit of self-examination, if not self-criticism-"What are my reactions, and why"?
Program notes by Mary Hunter